So, I’ve been on a self-imposed diet for the last 30 days. I’ve lost about 10 pounds so far by just not eating like a piggie, which is pretty cool.

I’ve been using Fitday.com1 very sporadically since April of 2004. I know this because I can go back and see what I entered for what I was eating and what I weighed back then. It’s a pretty cool feature. Kind of like Google Analytics for health.2 Friday was day 30 of my diet.

Unfortunately, Days 31 and 32 weren’t nearly as successful as days 1 through 30.

5 Responses to “Day 30”

Unfortunately, you can’t maintain that speed of weight loss, and most of it will probably come back when as soon as you break your diet. A pound of fat is 3500 Calories and you use roughly 2000 in a day. Assuming you starved yourself AND your metabolism continued at the same rate and took ALL of those 2000 Calories from your fat deposites, none of which is true, you could lose 4 pounds of fat a week and about 16 pounds a month.

Even if you have huge fat deposites to draw from, you probably can’t get by on less than 1000 calories today, so cut that number in half. Even that level will slow your metabolism and leave you with cravings that you won’t be able to resist while living in a first-world country with a burger joint on every corner and enough money in your wallet for a dozen burgers. The best healthy diet you could hope for is probably around 1500 Calories a day for a 500 Calorie deficit (so cut the number in half again) and I’ve seen figures that you can’t get healthy fat loss from anything more than a 200 Calorie daily deficit.

If we assume you hit the 500 Calorie deficit per day mark for the whole month, that gives you a maximum of 4 pounds of fat loss. I’ve noticed this pattern of weight loss too, and I can only guess that the other 6+ missing pounds is undigestible crud from the junk food that sits in your system longer than what’s in your “non-piggie” diet. When you start eating that crud again, those pounds will quickly return.

I don’t mean to be a downer. I’m just saying that you need to have realistic expectations.

@Whosa: Ah, actually, I wasn’t referring to days 31 and 32 as being unsuccessful in terms of weight loss – they were unsuccessful in terms of keeping to my diet. A crazy traveling and commitment schedule for the one weekend was enough to just crush that diet. I’ll not concerned with the rate of loss at all – but rather that I make myself keep to my diet and that there is a downward trend.

You want the best diet tip I can give you? Water. I don’t know what you’re drinking now, but getting rid of sweet and/or Caloric drinks has a huge effect, and staying well-hydrated is also important and seems, in my experience, to accelerate metabolism. I decided to cut out soda when I realized that I was chronically dehydrated and calculated that I could not drink enough soda to maintain my desired level of hydration AND continue to eat any form of food without constantly gaining weight.

What you want to do is drink at least two liters (~64oz) of water a day. That’s equal to the eight 8oz glasses figure that has been quoted incessantly. The study that figure came from was flawed because is was based on hospital patients on intravenous fluids and didn’t take into account that people eating solid food get about half of the water they need daily from food. Still, I find that staying more hydrated than necessary is beneficial.

Especially if you’re switching from drinking soda, you may want to start with flavored water/sparkling water. This is fine as long as it is UNSWEETENED. Most of what is sold as flavored sparkling water is actually clear diet soda. You want to check the label and make sure that it has no sugar, and no sucralose or aspartame (“Splenda” or “Nutrasweet”). Arrowhead and Perrier are good brands, but everything else at my local store is sweetened, and the Arrowhead comes in 1 liter bottles (the large plastic Perrier bottles are also 1 liter, but those don’t come in flavors) . You’ll eventually want to get to plain water, and for this I recommend finding a cool 1 liter bottle and keeping it with you, filling it twice a day. Either way, you should finish your first liter with lunch, and the second before you go to bed. Drink when you’re thirsty, but force yourself to finish the bottle at these times if you haven’t already so that you maintain your level of slight over-hydration throughout the day.